Thursday, April 30, 2009

Lit Circle #3 p. 3

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Today we discused the fact that the the teenage culture includes: phones, games, relationships, and finding limits. Also we talked about the ways that this book show oppresion. They include: Opersion of the city, operion of the rights, operssion of the person, and oppersion of the security. Latter we talked about how Little Brother could be related to: Romeo and Juliet, 1984, Animal Farm, The Kite Runner. These connections may cause the school board to accept the book, but if that is not enough, then the connections to the world and to the self may allow this book to be on the reading list.

Today was our first lit circle on I Am the Cheese. The book is kind of a mystery so our first few questions were hard to talk about, like why Adam's dad is in Vermont, where is his mother, etc. We mostly determined that the only things we really know about the book are that Adam is riding his bike to Rutterburg, Vermont to find his father, and that sometime in the future, he is explaining his story to a doctor, and telling him about the secret that his parents seemed to be hiding from him as a child. Then we discussed the possibility that Adam's dad isn't in Vermont and he is being tricked into going to this hospital in vermont so they can question him. We touched on the motifs of the book-confusion, naivety, fear, secrecy, death of good, desire, anger, and truth. We ended with considering that the people interviewing Adam in the future already know the secret, and are trying to see how much he knows in order to tell if he is a threat to the safety of that secret. That was the gist of it, there were a few other small things, but most of them were questions that remained unanswered due to the vagueness of the book.

During our Lit Circle today, we discussed a variety of topics. We began by going around the circle and sharing the motif examples we found in the assigned chapter, "Evidence." After everyone presented the motifs they found for homework, we passed around the book that we will eventually turn in. We recorded our motif examples so that they would all be organized in one book. Then we collectively and briefly summarized the chapter we read the previous night. It was basically about a lawyer, Quinn, who accuses another of being a robot. Quinn's only proof, nobody has ever seen the "man" eat or sleep and, according to Quinn, seems "quite inhuman." While the "man" (Byerley) does eventually appear to be a robot, Quinn, Dr. Susan Calvin, and Dr. Lanning, want to completely disregard Byerley's rights to privacy. After summarizing the chapter, we discussed whether or not there was any mildly controversial material in "Evidence." All we found was language and generalizations such as Calvin commenting, "Robots are essentially decent" (as opposed to human beings). Then we, as a group continued working on the reading curriculum worksheets. We decided that for homework, we are to finish the book as well as research whether or not I, Robot is on Cherry Creek or Douglas County's approved reading list for the 9th Grade.

1984-group 3 Today we discussed the topics of monitoring, freedom, rebellion and deceit. Winston is almost always being monitored during his life through telescreens and people who he thinks are spies. There are also many posters around Oceania that say Big Brother is watching you. We also talked about Winston's deceit. Winston is very deceitful with Julia when they secretely are having sex and Winston also had sex with a prostitute. Along with having sex Winston also writes in his diary which goes along with rebellion. He rebels multiple other times when he goes to the old antique shop. Another motif that we talked about was freedom. Winston sitting in the exact spot that the telescreen can't here him is an act of freedom. Along with motifs we discussed how sex is portrayed. We talked about how sex is not glorified and that would be one reason that sex is acceptable in this book.

First of all, so sorry this is late! Well on Friday my group talked about all of the motifs that we had looked for the night before. Hailey and I both were looking for examples of paranoia in the book, and what we realized was that paranoia is really what the government uses to run the society in this book. People are afraid of Big Brother, they are absolutely terrified of what will happen if they ever get caught breaking one of his laws. The fear runs so deep that one even has fear of his own children, afraid that they might turn him into the thought police. We also talked about desire, Katie's motif. In this book, desire is really what counteracts paranoia. Fear is what is making these people blindly trust what they are being told, fear is what is making them not question anything. However, you see with Winston, that his desire is what pushes him to break the law. Not only his desire for Julia, but his desire to see the government thrown down and the individual to earn the right to think what he wants to think, say what he wants to say and believe what he wants to believe. On Friday, we also spent time going through the 9th grade reading curriculum and looking for ways that 1984 meets those standards to help make out case to the school board.